User Interface (UI) Designers create the visual portion of a design. Their job is more solitary than User Experience (UX) Designers, although they are still part of a team. They spend much of their time working with digital design tools to be sure the design looks and performs just like it is supposed to.
What Do UI Designers Do?
UI Designers focus primarily on the visual portion of a product and how the user interacts with it. UI Designers often have backgrounds in art or graphic design and part of their job is to create or uphold the language of the design. This is the visual consistency across products or within one example. For instance, the different pages of a website should look similar and have buttons and drop-down menus in the same locations.
Because UI design is so visual, designers are concerned with subjects like typography, colors, style and branding, spacing, boldness, the number of items on a screen, icons or images that are part of the design. Successful user interfaces are predictable, simple and obvious to use, and forgivable, that is when users make a mistake, it is easy to see how to get back on track.
Day to Day Tasks for UI Designers
While UX Designers work with people quite a bit, UI Designers are more on their own. UI Designers focus on the visual aspect (how the website or app looks) and if it does what it is supposed to. The UX Designer hands off the blueprint for the product to the UI Designer who then uses design software to create the buttons and switches, choose colors, and determine where elements should be positioned on each page. UI Designers build different levels of prototypes for usability testing and make changes to the design according to the decisions of the team. The UI Designer is ultimately responsible for upholding the company brand in the design. The UI Designer builds on the work of the UX Designer to make changes until the team approves the design and passes it on to the developers for coding.
Qualities of UI Designers
Qualities that successful UI Designers share are curiosity and a love of figuring things out. You also need to be a good communicator and a careful listener. Empathy is an important quality for UI Designers because you need to be able to understand how the user feels and what they want. UI Designers also need to be analytical problem solvers and able to stick with a problem until they find a solution.
Some abilities that UI Designers need are knowledge of graphic design and typography, as well as knowing how to create wireframes and prototypes. An understanding of interactive design, branding, and color theory is also necessary.
Where Do UI Designers Work?
More UI Designers are employed in computing and IT than in any other industry but they can work anywhere companies value their skills. Some of the areas where UI Designers work are as follows:
- Computing and IT
- Finance and insurance
- Consulting
- Education
- Independent contracting
- Government and military
- Healthcare
- Retail
- Media
- Advertising
- Telecommunications
- Business
- Entertainment
- Aerospace and automotive
- Non-profit groups
Most UI Designers work full-time and are employed in industry, while 18% work as freelancers. Many jobs are currently remote and designers work mostly from home. They use various software applications to collaborate and share ideas and designs with team members.
What Skills Does a UI Designer Need?
UI Designers need an artistic eye and some aptitude in graphic and visual design to do their jobs well. Here are some other abilities UI Designers need:
- Graphic design
- Typography
- Color Theory
- Information Architecture
- Visual Design
- HTML and CSS
- Responsive design
- Animation
- Creating and using style guides
Other skills that are useful for UI Designers are what are considered soft skills like:
- Curiosity
- Creativity
- Empathy
- Listening
- Teamwork/collaboration
- Problem-solving
- Design
- Technical expertise
- Business understanding
What Apps and Tools Do UX Designers Use?
UI Designers use different types of software in their work. These tools allow them to design mobile apps and websites often without having to do any coding. Some of the most common are listed below.
Adobe XD
Adobe XD is a design tool based on vector graphics that allows you to create digital designs for everything from mobile apps to websites. XD is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud and works well with other CC apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Animate. There are many repeating features that make your workflow move faster, and XD also includes collaboration features that make it easy to share and test prototypes. You can run XD on both macOS and Windows.
Sketch
Sketch is a Mac application that doesn’t work on Windows. You can use vector editing tools or design at the pixel level. It allows you to scale to any screen size and speed up your workflow with mathematical shortcuts. As with XD, there are repeatable components and you can organize your design so everything is easy to find. Sketch recently added real-time collaboration, so now it is easier for a team to work together, and you can also create libraries of the elements the team is using. There are also many plugins available to customize your workspace.
InVision
InVision works to support the design process from brainstorming and collaborating with Freehand, prototyping with Cloud, or designing with Studio. You can create design libraries for the team. InVision works on the web, Android phones, and iPhones.
Figma
Figma is another design application. It includes FigJam which provides an online whiteboard for collaboration to let your design team plan, define, and workshop together. You can use the pen tool for vector graphics or plugins like an instant arc design. Auto Layout moves and stretches items automatically, and Figma makes the work move along efficiently. Figma runs on a browser so it will work with macOS, Windows, or Linux systems.
How to Learn UI Design
If you would like to learn how to use software like Adobe XD to switch to a career in UI design, one of the best ways to do that is to sign up for classes. You can choose classes that meet in-person or online to learn XD, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Some people prefer to attend brick-and-mortar sessions when learning new information, but that isn’t always available. Live online classes have a similar set-up with a real-time, remote instructor who can answer questions and take control of your monitor—with permission—to show you how to do things. Training is part or full-time and available weekdays, weeknights, or weekends.
The best way to prepare for a career shift to a field like UX or UI design is to enroll in a bootcamp or certificate program. These are intensive training courses that run from a few weeks to a few months and will cover motion graphics and animation in much more depth than tutorials can. Another plus of training is that you will leave class with a professional-quality sample video portfolio that you can show to prospective employers.
Conclusion
It’s easy to take UX design classes and start a new career. Choose between in-person sessions in NYC at Noble’s location or sign up for live online UX design courses and attend from anywhere. Find UX bootcamps in your area and get started in a new direction today.